With testing complete, actual cleanup of contaminated groundwater from a shuttered Cold War-era rocket engine and nuclear research facility in the Simi hills could take place soon, according to an update released to the public on Wednesday.

Cleanup activities would occur within NASA’s portion of the 2,850-acre Santa Susana Field Laboratory in Ventura County, located about seven miles north of Canoga Park and 30 miles northwest of downtown Los Angeles.

NASA is responsible for cleanup on two of the four areas or about 451 acres. Boeing Co. manages the rest of the 2,399 acres.

“NASA is eager to implement cleanup activities as soon as possible,” said Peter Zorba, NASA’s project director in the field update. NASA could not give a timetable for when groundwater cleanup would begin.

Removing toxic chemicals from the underground aquifer would entail pumping out water and stripping out Volatile Organic Chemicals (VOCs) using carbon filters and ultraviolet light.

Harmful chemicals

The chemicals of concern are: trichloroethene (TCE), a known human carcinogen that can cause liver cancer and non-Hodgkin lymphoma; 1,2-dichloroethene (DCE), highly flammable but not rated as a carcinogen; vinyl chloride, a human carcinogen; and 1,4-dioxane, possibly carcinogenic, according to the Record of Decision and other environmental assessments NASA filed with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency this year.

The Woolsey fire also impacted the Coca Test Stand in the background at the shuttered Santa Susana Field Laboratory as shown on Nov. 13. (photo courtesy of NASA)

Health effects depend on dose, concentration, bodily pathways and how long a person is exposed to the chemical.

Some nearby residents have said their loved ones have developed cancer but it is not known if the former rocket engine testing site had any impact in those cases.

Melissa Bumstead, a leading activist, believes her daughter Grace, who was diagnosed with a rare form of leukemia when she was 4 years old, got sick due to the release of radiation from the site. Her daughter was cancer-free until a relapse in 2017.

She said 50 children with cancer live within 20 miles of the Santa Susana Field Lab.

Cleanup

This past fall, NASA began removing fluids from pipelines in various rocket testing stands.

Any fluids found will be vacuumed out and shipped in closed containers to a toxic waste landfill if necessary, according to the NASA “Field Note” update.

“These are fluids, such as oils and other common industrial chemicals that were used,” said Jennifer Stanfield, a NASA spokesperson familiar with the project.

Some of the work at the Alfa testing stand began in September.

The plan is for the eventual demolition of the test stands. The site has been closed for more than 10 years. In 1989, the Department of Energy released a report on a partial meltdown of a sodium reactor that occurred in 1959 in the lab’s Area IV.

Fire impact?

The area around the field lab was believed to be the starting point of the the Woolsey Fire, which burned through portions of the lab.

Los Angeles County Department of Public Health sent inspectors to the facility in mid-November. Inspectors collected air samples and used devices to test for radiation.

The Health Department concluded “there was no discernible level of radiation in the tested area.”

Their conclusion was backed by the California Department of Toxic Substances Control, which said the fire did not pose any additional threats in a release from early November.

Fire swept through the service road, scorching the concrete rocket pads, burning oaks trees and downing power lines, according to the NASA update Nov. 28. Without power, NASA used generators to keep the lights on at the NASA site office, the update said.

Steve Scauzillo covers environment and transportation for the Southern California News Group. He has won two journalist of the year awards from the Angeles Chapter of the Sierra Club and is a recipient of the Aldo Leopold Award for Distinguished Editorial Writing on environmental issues. Steve studied biology/chemistry when attending East Meadow High School and Nassau College in New York (he actually loved botany!) and then majored in social ecology at UCI until switching to journalism. He also earned a master's degree in media from Cal State Fullerton. He has been an adjunct professor since 2005. Steve likes to take the train, subway and bicycle – sometimes all three – to assignments and the newsroom. He is married to Karen E. Klein, a former journalist with Los Angeles Daily News, L.A. Times, Bloomberg and the San Fernando Valley Business Journal and now vice president of content management for a bank. They have two grown sons, Andy and Matthew. They live in Pasadena. Steve recently watched all of “Star Trek” the remastered original season one on Amazon, so he has an inner nerd.